Train Management System Research Articles

An internet of things-enabled decision support system for freight transportation: A case study of Indian special freight transport operator

Railway organizations are spending on digitizing rail freight transportation for better resource utilization and revenue generation. In 2010, the Indian Railway (IR) proposed a “Special Freight Train Operator” scheme to build an IR stake in freight transportation in high-capacity rakes. IR allowed freight train operators (FTOs) and manufacturers to invest in wagons and take benefit of the largest rail network to move selected goods to their end customers. In the absence of an optimized support system, FTOs are often confronted with the decision of rolling stock (rake) scheduling, rake assignment, and rescheduling on a real-time basis. Today, most of the rakes have GPS devices. Thus, railway train management systems readily provide data to create a dynamic optimization model for FTOs using IoT-based real-time information. We first formulate a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model that aims at revenue maximization incorporating optimal rake assignment and optimal rake scheduling. Furthermore, to incorporate real-time GPS data, we propose an “IoT enabled real-time rake schedular-reschedular heuristic” for rescheduling. The computational investigations exhibit that the proposed heuristic performs effectively both in terms of run time and the quality of the solution. These models will help FTOs smoothly run day-to-day businesses and lead to better revenue realization in the calendar month by increasing the number of trips.

APPLICATIONS OF TELECOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN RAILWAY TRANSPORT

This article highlights the issues of the use of telecommunication technologies in railway transport. The GPS system is provided to determine the location of malfunctions on the roads and to prevent train collisions. A decision is also proposed to create a train control and management system to improve the existing railway transport service.

European railways on the way to the digital future

The issues of development and practical implementation of control systems and devices and traffic safety assurance, which lead to the digital future of railways, are considered. The main directions of digitalization of European railways are presented. The role and importance of the European Train Management System (ETCS) and the European Train Management and Safety Management System (ERTMS) are shown. Both systems are being implemented on the railways of European countries in stages (levels). Various systems of centralization of points and signals are gradually being replaced by digital centralization (DSTW). At the same time, much attention is paid to equipping railway crossings with modern automation and traffic safety. In different European countries, research and development work is being carried out and projects for the automation of train control are being implemented. At this stage, the automation process is being carried out more actively in public transport, especially successfully in the metro. The increasing use of distributed diagnostic components in rail transport has been observed along with the growing demand for a centralized diagnostic system. The works in the field of using the capabilities of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other modern technologies are noted. The study of foreign experience in digitalization of railway transport is useful to take into account when solving the problems of development and digitalization of Russian railways.

Reliability assessment of train control and management system based on evidential reasoning rule and covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy algorithm

The reliability assessment of train control and management system (TCMS) is essential for the condition monitoring of high-speed train. Different from other general complex systems, the TCMS has the characteristics of multi-system unit, strong coupling and multiple factors. Considering the special system operating environment and high safety requirements of high-speed train. In this paper, for the reliability assessment of TCMS, we propose a new quantitative model based on the evidential reasoning rule and covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy algorithm, the proposed model offers the following advantages: it has a strong modeling capability for the TCMS reliability, it has an interpretable model assessment process, it can describe the assessment result under probabilistic uncertainty and ignorance uncertainty, and it possesses considerable robustness. To make the model interpretable, an assessment hierarchy is established for the TCMS; to improve model robustness, weights interval is applied to replace the trained weights as the model weights. Several traditional methods are compared with the proposed model to demonstrate its performance, the results show that the proposed model has a better training accuracy. Moreover, a case study is conducted to verify the model’s functional feasibility.

Anomaly Detection and Attack Classification for Train Real-Time Ethernet

Real-time Ethernet has been applied to train control and management system (TCMS) of 250km/h Fuxing Electric Multiple Units (EMUs) and some urban rail vehicles. The openness of the Ethernet communication protocol poses a risk of intrusion attacks on the train communication network. It is, therefore, necessary that a safety protection technology is introduced to the train communication network based on real-time Ethernet. In this paper, a train communication network intrusion detection system based on anomaly detection and attack classification is proposed. Firstly, the paper built an anomaly detection model based on support vector machines (SVM). The particle swarm optimization-support vector machines (PSO-SVM), and genetic algorithm-support vector machines (GA-SVM) optimization algorithms are used to optimize the kernel function parameters of SVM. Secondly, the paper built two attack classification models based on random forest. They are iterative dichotomiser3 (ID3) and classification and regression tree (CART). And then, the built intrusion detection and attack classification model is tested by using the public data set knowledge discovery and data mining-99(KDD-99) and the data set of the simulation train real-time Ethernet test bench. PSO-SVM improves the intrusion detection accuracy from 90.3% to 95.75%, GA-SVM improves the detection accuracy from 90.3% to 95.85%. The training time of the PSO-SVM algorithm was higher than that of the GA-SVM algorithm, and much higher than that of the SVM, without optimization. Both ID3 and CART models are verified valid in the attack classification, while the ID3 algorithm obtained 100% accuracy on the training set, and only 32.89% accuracy on the test set, ID3 has a poor classification accuracy of the data outside of the training set. Also, the classification time is very long for ID3 compared with CART. So the comprehensive experimental results show that the intrusion detection system of train real-time Ethernet can use the GA-SVM model for detection of abnormal data. After passing the normal data, the CART model can be used to distinguish between the types of attacks to better complete subsequent responses and operations. Compared with the anomaly detection model based on SVM, the proposed model improves intrusion detection accuracy. And the proposed attack classification algorithm based on CART can improve the computing speed while ensuring the precision of classification.

Guest Editorial 5G Wireless Communications With High Mobility

The fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are expected to support communications with high mobility, e.g., with a speed up to 500 km/h. Hence 5G communications will have numerous applications in high mobility scenarios, such as high speed railways (HSRs), vehicular ad hoc networks, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) communications [1] – [3] . The 5G systems will provide advanced communication platforms enabling reliable transmission for the Wireless Train Backbone (WLTB) or Wireless Train Control & Management System (WTCMS) [4] , [5] . They will also enable new services or enhancements for vehicular communications in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) [6] – [9] . The coordination and swarming control for UAVs will also benefit from 5G capabilities, as UAV-based 5G infrastructure modeling and improvement have begun receiving attention [10] . In general, high mobility communication is not only about how large is the maximum speed, it is more about the challenges caused by mobility. In high mobility scenarios, a wireless channel is rapidly time varying, Doppler shifts and spreads can be much larger than those in cellular communications, and if modeled statistically, the channel will be non-wide-sense stationary (non-WSS) over a short time period. In addition, network topology can change quickly, and switching among base stations (BSs) and/or peer nodes can be more frequent, not forgetting 5G challenges in cross-border mobility [11] .

Prevention of End-of-Track Collisions in Passenger Terminals via Positive Train Control: Benefit-Cost Analysis and Operational Impact Assessment

End-of-track collisions at passenger terminals have raised safety concerns because of their potentially severe consequences such as infrastructure and rolling stock damage, service disruption, and even casualties. As introduced in the previous study sponsored by the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, the implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) systems at passenger terminal stations could potentially prevent end-of-track collisions. As the second phase of that project, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed concept of operation via quantitatively identifying the safety benefits, incremental costs, and operational impacts associated with PTC enforcement on terminating tracks. The benefit-cost analysis indicates that the safety benefits may exceed the incremental costs over a 20-year period under specified circumstances and assumptions. In addition, the preliminary results disclose that the operational impact in PTC enforcement should be negligible, except for the rare occurrence of wayside interface unit (WIU) failure or radio failure in the Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS)-type PTC system that would result in a stop well short of the targeted point and potentially delay both onboard passengers and inbound/outbound trains. Both benefit-cost analysis and operational impact assessment methodologies are implemented in a decision tool that can be customized for different terminals with heterogeneous infrastructure and operational characteristics and be adapted to other transportation modes.

Prevention of End-of-Track Collisions at Passenger Terminals via Positive Train Control

A series of end-of-track collisions occurred in passenger terminals because of noncompliant actions from disengaged or inattentive engineers, resulting in significant property damage and casualties. Compared with other types of accidents, end-of-track collision has received much less attention in the prior research. To narrow this knowledge gap, this paper firstly analyzes the safety statistics of end-of-track collisions, then develops a fault tree analysis to understand the causes and contributing factors of end-of-track collisions. With the objective of mitigating this type of risk, this paper discusses the potential implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC) for the passenger terminal. This paper primarily focuses on the enforcement of the two most widely implemented systems, the Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement System (ACSES) and the Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS). For each implementation scenario, the Concept of Operations (ConOps) is proposed that depicts high-level system characteristics for the proposed PTC system enforcement at stub-end terminals. Ongoing work is being carried out by the authors to fully evaluate the cost-effectiveness and operational impacts of enforcing PTC in terminating tracks to prevent end-of-track collisions.

Channel Model and Interference Evaluation for a Wireless Train Backbone

Modern trains have become a complicated ensemble of both mechanic and electronic systems. In particular, the so called Train Control and Management System (TCMS) plays a key role in them. TCMS-related applications and services run over a dedicated network called TCN (Train Communications Network) which is wired. Therefore, the opportunity for a wireless TCN is clear, but the challenges and threats are also remarkable. In this article we characterize the radio channel for a very important scenario: the train backbone, which includes the impact on adjacent trains (due to interferences). In order to be exhaustive and to provide useful and accurate models, a measurement campaign on three different real-world scenarios (with trains involved) has been carried out: tunnels, open air and stations. Physical layer results are provided in terms of path-loss, power-delay profile and fading distribution characterization.

A Threat for the Trains: Ransomware as a New Risk

Nowadays we cannot speak about cybersecurity as a simple problem. It is not just about users cannot properly use the devices because of a malware settle in their computers. Now professionals have to work in a more complex system. The information technology meshes most of our life. Begin with people use their smartphones over that companies lead most of their processes via computers. Nations want that their citizens can live in a healthier, more comfortable, economical place, so they started to think about how can they warrant a better life. Result in this governments started to make critical infrastructure more economical with the help of information technology. That is how Smart Cities began to evolve. However, bringing into practice these innovations is still not enough. If we use any technology, we shall use it securely, that is why we must build our advanced city as a secure Smart City. If not, our systems can be attacked in different ways. In the view of last years, we can accept, that ransomware can make considerable problems in different systems. Last time NotPetya caused many problems in Ukraine's infrastructure. The metro and the airport information technology systems were also victims of this malicious code. The security of the transportation is essential not just because of public transport one of the leading part of Smart Cities, but because in these public vehicles many people travel day by day, so these are critical infrastructures. This article is processing what could happen if Hungarian train management systems got attacked by ransomware. What are the risks and how should we protect against them?

Positive Train Control Security: An Intrusion-Detection System to Provide Cyber-Situational Awareness

American railroads plan to complete implementation of their positive train control (PTC) systems by 2020, with the primary safety objectives of avoiding intertrain collisions/train derailments and ensuring railroad worker safety. Under published Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS) specifications, the onboard unit (OBU) communicates with two networks: 1) the signaling network that conveys track warrants to occupy blocks and 2) the wayside interface unit (WIU) network, a sensor network situated on tracks to gather navigational information. These include the status of the rail infrastructure (such as switches) and any operational hazards that may affect the intended train path.

SIL2 assessment of an Active/Standby COTS-based Safety-Related system

The need of reducing costs and shortening development time is resulting in a more and more pervasive use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf components also for the development of Safety-Related systems, which traditionally relied on ad-hoc design. This technology trend exacerbates the inherent difficulty of satisfying – and certifying – the challenging safety requirements imposed by safety certification standards, since the complexity of individual components (and consequently of the overall system) has increased by orders of magnitude. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes an approach to safety certification that is rigorous while also practical. The approach is hybrid, meaning that it effectively combines analytical modeling and field measurements. The techniques are presented and the results validated with respect to an Active/Standby COTS-Based industrial system, namely the Train Management System of Hitachi-Ansaldo STS, which has to satisfy Safety Integrity Level 2 requirements. A modeling phase is first used to identify COTS safety bottlenecks. For these components, a mitigation strategy is proposed, and then validated in an experimental phase that is conducted on the real system. The study demonstrates that with a relatively little effort we are able to configure the target system in such a way that it achieves SIL2.

Synergies for Trains and Cars Automation in the Era of Virtual Networking

The ERTMS (European Train Management System) has been developed by the European Union (EU) to enhance safety, increase efficiency and to cross-border interoperability creating a unique solution fulfilling a standardized certification process. The ERTMS being able to automatically stop the train to overcome human errors has achieved the highest track record in terms of safety over several billion km travelled each years. GNSS positioning, bearer-independent telecoms and ATO (Automatic Train Operation) are the new features for enhancing the ERTMS in the path to fully autonomous operations. In the same period, the automotive industry has launched ambitious plans for the connected cars and autonomous driving applications are emerging as the next wave of innovation. This paper evaluates the challenges to sharing intelligent infrastructure means, by combining the strengths of the safety benchmark achieved on the rail transport with the mass production capability of the automotive industry to lower the costs. In this scenario, rail and automotive becoming tightly intertwined can get a grip in the race towards a fully automation affordable and safe, giving birth to autonomous vehicles able to travel within virtual rails as “trains” on the road. To this aim we will introduce the two test bed in Italy respectively for validating the ERTMS with GNSS positioning and public telecoms networks and for testing FCA Ducato vans to operate at SAE level 3 automation exploiting the new GALILEO and 5 G services.

Evaluation and reduction of vulnerability of subway equipment: An integrated framework

Subway system, consisted of a variety of equipment, is a fundamental and critical infrastructure providing basic transportation service for promoting social development. According to statistics, it is discovered that equipment fault is the main reason for interruptions or accidents in subway operation. Due to the serious results of equipment fault, equipment safety management should be proactive and effective. At first, an integrated framework is put forward for evaluation and reduction of vulnerability of subway equipment. Then, case study is implemented for demonstrating feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed framework in evaluating vulnerability in vehicle and assessing running status of wheel set. It is discovered that the two kinds of most vulnerable equipment in vehicle are train door and train control and management system. The running status of 24 detected wheel sets are identified based on variable weight theory. Finally, recommendations are proposed for reducing the vulnerability and promoting equipment safety management from two perspectives. The warning threshold is set as blue warning, yellow warning and red warning. The logic diagram of maintenance modes is presented in consideration of vulnerability, technology, economy and fault feature. The proposed framework has the potential for a better understanding of vulnerability of subway equipment, and this study may be beneficial to offer suggestions related to equipment safety management for reducing accident caused by equipment fault.

LTE-R Handover Point Control Scheme for High-Speed Railways

LTE-R is a new standard under development to serve future high-speed railway systems (HSRs) with reliable real-time train control and management system support as well as passenger safety, convenience, and infotainment services. The QoS of LTE communications is significantly degraded in HSRs due to rapid channel variations that exceed the variation range of LTE systems, resulting in delayed handover or handover failure due to radio link failure. Therefore, a handover decision scheme optimized for HSRs to ensure the QoS requirements for communications is necessary. In this article, a new H2 scheme for HSRs is proposed, which improves the handover performance of high-speed moving LTE systems. The H2 scheme monitors the reference signal received power variation level of the serving evolved node B and handover target evolved node B to prevent late handover and stably execute handover in rapidly changing conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed H2 scheme can significantly lower the handover failure probability for HSRs compared to the handover schemes currently used in LTE.

An evaluation of train control information systems for sustainable railway using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model

PurposeIn the process of nowadays efficiency evaluation of any mode of transportation, sustainability results are the most important factor. In regard to railway sustainability, Train Control Information Systems (TCIS) are such advanced systems with important positive impacts. The main purpose of this study was therefore the evaluation of these impacts as well as the evaluation of Key Performance Themes (KPT) for sustainable railways.MethodsFirstly a very detailed literature review of papers that have focused on TCIS and their improvements on railway sustainability, published in the scientific journal in the period from 2005 and 2016, was performed. The number of studies was then used as a main criteria in Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) evaluations or rankings of these systems and their impacts.ResultsThe paper offers results from the first systematic review of papers which investigate the role of TCIS in terms of sustainability and, additionally, represents a refined approach to TCIS classification with a new classes descriptions. During review KPT for sustainable railways were also identified. Further, AHP evaluated the Train Management and Interlocking Systems and their subsystems as the most important TCIS, and safety and costs of equipment, installation, maintenance and operation as the most important themes.ConclusionsThe results are important for both, scholars for their future research and for other railway stakeholders and decision makers, who must select different systems and technologies for implementation in their railway systems with emphasis on increasing performance and sustainability. The study offers also the opportunities for further research in regard to railway sustainability.

2.6 GHz Intra-Consist Channel Model for Train Control and Management Systems

This paper presents a full characterization of the communications channel inside a train vehicle, in both narrow and wideband configurations. The purpose of this characterization is to be one of the first steps to check the feasibility of a wireless implementation of a train-control management system, a service which has been always carried over a wired network. Many different train topologies and scenarios have been taken into account in this paper (continuous and non-continuous train; train inside a tunnel, open-air or depot) and different results have been obtained (path-loss, angle of arrival, power-delay profile, and delay spread). The results show significant differences between continuous and non-continuous trains, and also highlight the importance of having a proper channel model with one slope per train car, instead of having only one slope for the whole train.

Beyond Condition-Monitoring: Comparing Diagnostic Events with Word Sequence Kernel for Train Delay Prediction

In the modern trains operated by the Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) in the Netherlands, there are on-board train management systems continuously monitoring the conditions of various train modules such as traction, climate, brake electronics and so forth. When an abnormal or particular situation occurs, the system will generate and store an event log on the local disk or on a remote disk using wireless data communications. These diagnostic events might give an indication of the train condition, and currently critical events are selected by business rules to give alarms on failure or malfunction to the control room. To give a better prediction on the trains status based on the condition monitoring data, sequences of diagnostic events instead of individual critical events are analyzed in this work. Moreover, train delays instead of train failures are used as targets for providing more insight on the degeneration behavior of trains. We have adopted the word sequence kernel for learning the similarity between all sequence pairs, where each diagnostic event is considered as a word. To include multi-length word interpretations, we propose to combine the word sequence kernels of various lengths, where length=1 means one word is matched, length=2 means two words are matched, and so on. A kernel machine or similarity-based model can be learned directly on this combined word sequence kernel. The experimental results demonstrate that combining word sequence kernels of different lengths can bring a richer description to similarity measurements and gives better prediction performance.

Opportunistic inspection planning for Railway eMaintenance

Abstract: Railway infrastructure is a complex system that comprises of several subsystems which interacts in hierarchical, multi-distributive and multi-user environment. It is a difficult task to perform inspections for all the assets at an instant because the train management system decides when to conduct different types of inspection techniques on several assets in a particular track section. There are two main wastes of resources for inspection planning occurred in maintenance; under usage due to inaccurate prediction of failure and over usage because the necessary information already has been acquired from other sources. These irregularities lead to wastage of resources, for instance, human, machine and time that has tremendous implications on cost, availability and manpower. This paper proposes a methodology by using intelligent functional test outcome to assess the performability of an asset and integrating the data to the eMaintenance cloud platform of Swedish railway infrastructure. By implementing this methodology, we can achieve better planning of resources for optimal performance of assets. A case study is performed on Switches and Crossings of Swedish railway infrastructure for the applicability of the proposed methodology.

Modelling and Simulation of ERTMS for Current and Future Mobile Technologies

Nowadays, train control in-lab simulation tools play a crucial role in reducing extensive and expensive on-site railway testing activities. In this paper, we present our contribution in this arena by detailing the internals of our European Railway Train Management System in-lab demonstrator. This demonstrator is built over a general-purpose simulation framework, Riverbed Modeler, previously Opnet Modeler. Our framework models both ERTMS subsystems, the Automatic Train Protection application layer based on movement authority message exchange and the telecommunication subsystem based on GSM-R communication technology. We provide detailed information on our modelling strategy. We also validate our simulation framework with real trace data. To conclude, under current industry migration scenario from GSM-R legacy obsolescence to IP-based heterogeneous technologies, our simulation framework represents a singular tool to railway operators. As an example, we present the assessment of related performance indicators for a specific railway network using a candidate replacement technology, LTE, versus current legacy technology. To the best of our knowledge, there is no similar initiative able to measure the impact of the telecommunication subsystem in the railway network availability.